Zombie Me

My ZomBcon experience: Don't interview the zombies

I set off to ZomBcon with a mission Fri afternoon. Yes, I was covering the event for hotarmisticenews.blogspot.com But I also wanted to finally understand: What's the big deal with zombies?

You have probably heard that Seattle is the unofficial zombie capital of the world, mostly because the people here like to stagger through the Fremont neighborhood wearing scary face paint and coordinate mass-performances of Michael Jackson's "Thriller." But even outside of Seattle, it seems like there's been a massive uprising of zombie culture lately, a movement perhaps only rivaled by studly vampires.

What gives?

I live in Fremont, but my experience with the neighborhood's Zombie Walk is limited, mostly extending to an ill-timed drive to a grocery store that plopped me right in the middle of last year's walk.

"URAAAAAWWRRR," one zombie groaned as he half-rolled across the hood of my stopped car.

"How do I spell that?" I wondered as I tried to update Twitter.

It thought it wouldn't be too hard to get an answer to my "why" questions at ZomBcon. It is, after all, a gathering of the most hard-core zombie fans in the region.

I 1st approached a young man dressed in a tattered suit and gray makeup outside of the Seattle Center Exhibition Hall. He seemed like a remarkably realistic zombie, and that probably should have tipped me off to what was coming next.

"Excuse me," I said. "May I ask you a question?"

"ARRRRAAHAAHAHA," he replied, wiggling his arms and rolling his eyes.

We stared at each other for a few seconds. Once again, I thought: "How do I spell that?"

My luck at ZomBcon improved. I figured out how to spell zombie-speak (you might have already noticed that) and even found a few people willing to articulate the appeal of zombie culture. I will have more about that in a separate story on you can read here. But the important thing is this: I did figure out what's at the center of all this zombie hullabaloo.

The answer came from Chicago-based author Scott Kenemore, the man who penned "The Art of Zombie Warfare" and "The Zen of Zombie." Kenemore, a guest speaker at the convention, put it this way: "Within the fraternity of the zombies, everyone is welcome. As long as they are a zombie."

In other words, zombies don't judge. They just want to eat your brains.